For Leke:
When I was six I found a photograph of my parents – black and white which I thought was funny because that is what they were.
How I found it was: after pressing purple and red flowers between the pages of heavy books I would put them on the shelf and forget about them. And then many weeks later raid my parent's library. It was like harvesting crops, opening all the books, holding them at their spines and shaking them out. The delicate dried flowers would fall to the floor. And one day the photograph fell out. It was magic for me. I was certain I had planted a string of daisies in between the pages. When the photo fell out instead it was as if the book had chewed up my flowers and spat out the picture in their place. I loved that picture. I made my mother read what it said on the back.
I kept the picture, claiming ownership. When I grew older I decided that it had been taken in South Africa. I made up that it was the last picture my parents had taken of themselves in South Africa, wildly in love and illegal. They were about to flee and then they asked someone to take a picture of them. Perhaps they thought they would never come back again. They were both smiling. They'd interlaced their ringers and squeezed their joined hands between their cheeks. They pressed into each other and my mother's face would have been flushed pink and my father's smile was beautiful. They did seem happy but there was also something else. Perhaps they pressed too hard against each other. You know, like maybe when you’re in bed at night, in the dark with strange shadows in the corners. And you squeeze the blankets extra tight. They were squeezing each other like that so perhaps that's what it was.